Caffeine Withdrawal – The Climb #940

Sunday 19th September 2021

One of the things I want to do as part of my return to health journey is to give up caffeine. I am a complete caffeine addict and I know why. When you suffer varying energy levels, it’s a useful crutch to get you through the day. It smooths over those energy lulls.

The problem is the amount I consume. I go from enjoying a drink with caffeine, to needing it to getting me through the day, to becoming addicted.

And the worst part is that coming off it is doubly rough. First and foremost is the fact that I then have nothing to see me through energy lulls. It means I run out of energy fast, I doze in the evening, I crave a nap in the afternoon. It gives me nowhere to hide and it can be pretty rough.

Secondly is that caffeine withdrawal is a nightmare!

We used to drink a load of caffeine on the Support Bubble Sofa but in recent months we’ve swapped to water and cordial. It’s definitely an improvement and I feel better for it, but I do have this bizarre situation where I come home of an evening and then have to drink caffeine before I go to bed which is nonsensical. Who needs to take a stimulant before they try and get to sleep?

What happens if I don’t is what happened today!

Because it was the weekend I headed to the Support Bubble Sofa earlier than normal yesterday. I was happy drinking water but when I got home last night it was late, and I was tired. So I went straight to bed.

It meant that by the time I got up I’d gone 18 hours without caffeine, and boy, did I know it! I woke with a blistering headache. I knew instantly what it was. I start getting headaches after 12 hours of no caffeine. 18 hours was full on withdrawal.

You can only drink so fast, and no matter how much caffeine I drank (including an energy drink) it did nothing stopping my symptoms from worsening. By midday I had such a migraine that I had to go and lay down in a shaded room for a couple of hours.

Now, a sensible person might say that if I’d gone that far I might as well continue, get over the initial withdrawal and then continue with my caffeine-free life. Which would be sensible, if I didn’t need to interact with people. I’m not a pleasant person to be around when I have caffeine withdrawal. I’m also pretty much non-functional for a good few days.

So the plan has been to do it later this week when people are away and I have a few days of alone time where I can be non-functional.

It was Pokemon Go Community Day today and I was thankful that it wasn’t a pokemon I really cared about as for most of the event I was non-functional and only caught a couple of shinies.

Despite resupplying myself heavily with caffeine from the morning, it took until early evening for me to feel back to ‘normal’. I hate that it has that much of an effect on me, and I hate how easy it is for me to slip back into it to try and get me through the day to day.

I’m much better without it. I’ve tried reducing it, but I always become more and more reliant on it until I’m back to where I was.

I’m not looking forward to having withdrawal two times in a week, but I know once I get through the hell that those couple of days, and then get the energy fluctuations under control, I’ll feel a lot better. But it’s one of those things where it has to get a lot worse before it gets better.